Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games

Game Design Workshop is a pragmatic textbook on how to make games, with a plethora of useful exercises in analysis and design for helping rookies turn their game design dreams into reality. There isn’t much in the way of theory here; a brief nod towards Huizinga’s magic circle and the flow state, and then the book delves into the meat of prototype, iteration, and improvement. As a gamer, it’s interesting to see the small number of games which people at the top of the field consider their inspirations (ever heard of M.U.L.E?) As a teacher, there are tons of good exercises that could be adapted into homework.

Game Design Workshop is deliberately agnostic towards what type of games its reader will make, although there is a slight trend bias towards cardboard prototypes of computer games, a practice followed by many major studios. The advice on using playtesters was particularly good. Compared to Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses this book is much less theoretical, preferring a loose concept of ‘play’ to stricter ideas about storytelling, simulation, and balance.

I read the second edition, which in 2015 is slightly outdated, but I have faith that the 2013 3rd edition is a worthy upgrade. If I were teaching a class on game design, I’d definitely consider this book a central resource.